Language slips

As a retired modern languages teacher, I have enjoyed your recent articles and letters on the state of language learning in Scotland today. Your two correspondents Messrs Lewis and Gray (Letters, 7 August), seem to have hit the nail on the head.

In my view, the rot set in with the advent of the communicative methodology in the early 1980s which emphasised ‘getting the message across’ and de-emphasised grammar and vocabulary learning. The results of this approach were seen in lower pass rates in languages in the 1990s.

In today’s language classrooms, success is largely down to the regurgitation of material, itself endlessly corrected. Which is fine, but it isn’t what learning languages is about.

The ship of Scottish education has had to ply a dangerous passage between the Scylla and Charybdis of our current century – Faculty Management and Curriculum for Excellence. The former is a management-driven attempt to combine departments so as to save money, while the latter uses subject learning to integrate subjects and prepare students for life – except there isn’t any subject learning. And so we slip down international comparison tables.

Pupils vote with their feet. Language is hard. I know – having tried to teach myself some Russian recently!

DONALD THOMSON Salisbury Terrace, Aberdeen